Eleven Minutes Is All It Takes. Go Browns

"At some point, and I really don't know when, the city of Cleveland became one with its football team. Together they rise and fall, in victory, in defeat. It's inseparable. For better or worse, the Browns are Cleveland." --Opening lines of the History of the Cleveland Browns

In the first ten years of the Browns franchise, the Cleveland Browns won 84% of their games and won seven titles. The team was organized in 1946 and many, if not most, of the players were just back from military service. Paul Brown was a tough disciplinarian, but these guys weren't intimidated by that. Football, compared to combat, was a piece of cake.

The Browns were charter members of the All-America Football Conference which began in 1946. They won the AAFC title in every year of its 4-year existence. The had a 29 game winning streak that went from late 1947 to 1949. They never lost a game in 1948 and finished the season 14 and 0.

In 1950 the Browns joined the NFL and they were ready. All the sportwriters picked the NFL 1949 champion Philadelphia Eagle to win. They assumed the Browns domination of the AAFC was due to the weak competition. NOW they would play real football teams.

Haha. Browns crushed the Eagles 35 -10. The Browns were emotionally ready to show the NFL that they were not a fluke. Marion Motley running back led the league in rushing. The defense led the league in fewest points allowed with 55 takeaways under their belts. 

Paul Brown was one of the great coaches of all time and some of the game's other great coaches years later had been players for Brown and his Browns: Don Shula and Chuck Noll. (I touched Chuck Noll's mailbox once in suburban Pittsburgh. I was walking with someone who said, "Chuck Noll lives there." Such an ordinary nice house in an ordinary nice neighborhood.) 

Paul Brown was the greatest innovator in football coaching history. It was he who invented the concept of the playbook. He famously said, "Football is played with the mind as well as with the heart."

* * * 

According to a Wall Street Journal study of four recent broadcasts, and similar estimates by researchers, the average amount of time the ball is in play on the field during an NFL game is about 11 minutes.

This afternoon the Cleveland Browns will be playing the Kansas City Chiefs in Round 2 of the playoffs. Two talented young quarterbacks will be on display here, Pat Mahomes and the Browns' Baker Mayfield. The Chiefs are favored, but Browns fans are undaunted. Something historical can happen on any given Sunday.